Discover how to find missing files and folders with our guide to smarter searching

The old days of remembering where you stored every created file are long gone. For most of us this is a good thing, as we rarely remembered where everything was and wasted time searching for files. Modern versions of OS X augment files in the Finder with a huge amount of metadata – additional information that describes a file’s data. A photo will have a name and a file type, but also all kinds of other information: when it was taken, what camera was used, where it was photographed, the camera’s aperture setting, dimensions, colour space, and so on. All this information can be used to find files, no matter where they are located, using Spotlight. So if you want to get better at finding files, you should learn to spot the metadata attached to each file. Select a file and choose File > Get Info. Look under the More Info section of the Info window to see what metadata is attached to that file. This is the sort of thing you can search for in Spotlight. If you want to view all the metadata for a file, open a Terminal window and type mdls followed by a space, then drag a file onto the window to add its path to the command and press ®. Yosemite emphasises Spotlight’s ease of use in searching, assuming you would prefer to type what you’re looking for into a search field, rather than locate it in a familiar folder. So if you can’t find a specific file, press ç+[Spacebar] to call up the Spotlight search bar and type the file or folder name or a word it contains. Select a file in the results and hold down the ç key to view the path to where it’s stored. Click a result with ç held to open a Finder window at its location. If you’re going to rely on Spotlight to find files, it’s a good idea to start naming files intelligently so you can identify them in Spotlight. Try to include a description, project, version and even a date in the file’s name.

Getting back Finder locations
Sometimes you still end up digging around for files in Finder, though. Recent versions of OS X have changed a few things: new windows show the All My Files view by default, and a few of the pre-created folders in your home folder are no longer listed in the sidebar. However, both of these things are customisable to help you reach what you need more quickly. You can drag any folder into the Favorites group in the sidebar to make it reachable in an instant. Folders can be added to the Dock by dragging them into the area to the right of the dividing line, and the appearance of these shortcuts, called Stacks, can be customised by ≈-clicking them. To change the folder that new Finder windows display, go to Finder > Preferences > General and set ‘New Finder windows show’ to any folder. Files created in iOS apps are stored in your iCloud Drive, yet you don’t have to open those files from within apps on a Mac, like you would in iOS. Choose Go > iCloud Drive or select the iCloud Drive shortcut in a Finder window’s sidebar to browse them. However, be careful about moving around files that are still syncing to your Mac (indicated by a progress bar) as this can cause them to be lost. Deleted files can be recovered in Settings > Advanced at icloud.com.

Problems with updating to El Capitan macintos

El Capitan is Apple’s upcoming version of OS X, due to be released in the autumn. But Apple’s public beta program (beta.apple.com) means anybody can install OS X El Capitan right now. Installing the beta version of OS X is a double-edged sword. It isn’t finished yet, and there are problems being reported with Aperture, Disk Utility, iCloud Keychain, iTunes, Mail, networking and language settings. That’s enough to give even seasoned developers a headache. These gremlins are likely to be fixed for the full release, but even when the final version of OS X El Capitan is released, we urge caution before upgrading. Development problems will be long gone, but there may still be issues with third-party software. Even major apps, such as those made by Adobe and Microsoft, have been troublesome in the past as they struggled to adapt to Apple’s release schedule. El Capitan could exacerbate this with a new feature called System Integrity Protection (SIP). This new feature prevents programs from making changes to key OS X system folders. This protection even applies if you are using the ‘root’ user account, which is why SIP is often called ‘rootless’. As a general rule, if you have to ask: “should I update to the new version of OS X?” then the answer is probably “no” – at least not until a couple of weeks have passed and you can see what problems are being reported.

My Mac struggles with Yosemite

The upgrade from OS X 10.9 to OS X 10.10 introduced new versions of built-in apps that made greater use of iCloud for collaborative working. However, there have been teething troubles with syncing documents using iCloud Drive. Alongside this, many users have reported ongoing networking and Wi-Fi problems in Yosemite. On the whole, people are hoping that Apple concentrates on fixing problems in the upcoming release of El Capitan. Yosemite’s issues have mostly been addressed by Apple in a series of software updates. If the system is still giving you problems, the first thing you should do is make sure you have the latest update (10.10.5 is currently the latest version). Go to the App Store and click Updates. If any are available for OS X, they’ll be listed above app updates – click Update next to them, or Update All. The same advice applies to troublesome apps: user feedback and technical updates contribute to frequent app improvements, so install newer versions whenever you can. You can set OS X to perform automatic updates for apps installed from the Mac App Store. Open System Preferences > App Store, select ‘Automatically check for updates’ and then enable all of the download and install options below.

Fixing Wi-Fi woes
Yosemite doesn’t always work smoothly with existing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices, as early upgraders discovered. A subsequent Apple update has apparently fixed the Wi-Fi problem, but if you still have trouble with Bluetooth accessories, try resetting your Mac’s NVRAM (see page 38). Graphical issues were relatively common on Mavericks and persisted in Yosemite, particularly on Macs that struggle with its demands. 8GB of free drive space and 2GB of RAM are essential. More of both is preferable. It’s hard to update the graphics card on a Mac, but some older Macs have upgradable RAM. Use Crucial System Scanner (uk. crucial.com) to determine if an upgrade is available for yours. If upgrading your hardware is out of the question, try reducing the impact of the newer system features on your Mac. Widgets in Notification Center can be sacrificed in System Preferences > Extensions > Today; try deselecting real-time items such as Stocks and Weather. On a Mac with a very low specification, visual effects on the Dock – magnification as you move over icons and, less so, animating icons as apps open – can get juddery. You can turn these off in System Preferences > Dock. Some users report that they occasionally can’t save a document because the Save dialog box hangs off the edge of the screen. There is an annoying bug in Yosemite that increases the Save As dialog box’s size each time you use it. Hold down ß and put the pointer over one edge of the dialog and drag it inwards to reduce its height and width together. You can then reach the Save button.

Visual guides Mac and ios problems solved

Monitoring CPU and RAM

Use Activity Monitor (in /Applications/Utilities) to establish what apps and processes are using up the most CPU or RAM. Its CPU tab lists active processes in a real-time view of what’s going on.

Switch to different stats
Activity Monitor details five different resources: CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk, and Network usage. Switch between them by clicking on the tabs at the top of the windows. If you think your Mac is running slowly, the CPU and Memory sections are likely to be of most interest.

Sort by usage
Each tab’s columns show how processes are using that particular resource. Typically the second column is the most important. Click a column name, such as % CPU or Memory, so the arrow points down to sort processes so the ones using the most amount of that resource are at the top. Items at the top of the list are usually the ones using the highest percentage of CPU power. Fluctuations and spikes in this are shown on the graph at the bottom. It’s perfectly normal for these to occur as you open an app, download a video or render a complex, layered image. If Safari shows a web-based game or video clip using a significant portion of the CPU even after you’ve stopped using it, it’s likely to have stalled.

Force quit unruly apps
When a process is shown in red, this is Activity Monitor’s way of saying it’s unresponsive. This is usually accompanied by unresponsive behaviour from the app in question (although some processes run behind the scenes). To force quit an item, click it in Activity Monitor’s list, then on the X at the left of the toolbar, then confirm you want to force quit it.

Search and monitor
Use the Search bar to check on a specific program or process. If you have Dropbox or Spotify installed, it’s worth checking whether they are using too much network bandwidth, for example. You can check whether large backups or downloads are taking place in the Network tab

Generating diagnostics
Choose View > run System Diagnostic to generate a diagnostics report containing files that allow Apple to investigate issues with your Mac. Accept the privacy agreement, then enter your account’s password to allow Apple access the information for the diagnostics test.

ENERGY USAGE
You can consult your apps’ energy usage by clicking the battery icon in the menu bar on a MacBook. In Activity Monitor, you can see which apps are using the most processing power. Click the Energy tab and then sort the Energy Impact column to see which apps are using the most power over time. Also consider installing Coconut Battery (free, coconut flavour. com), which provides information about how many charge cycles your battery has been through, and its remaining capacity and health status.

Is your Mac running slowly ? These tips grease its cogs and shift it up a gear

How to speed up a Mac is one of the most common requests, not least with Macs which are more than a few years old. Slow performance is one of the most irritating things to happen to any user. The good news is that Apple tests upgrades to OS X against older machines and makes sure they’re capable of running everything correctly, so if you are experiencing slowdown it’s usually fixable. Having said that, Yosemite was a significant operating system upgrade from Mavericks, with plenty of additional features. If you are encountering slow performance, the very first stop should be to empty the Trash. OS X needs some free space to move files around, and typically we advise around 10 percent of your hard drive space, or at least 10GB. Before you even start to examine your disk space, get rid of any unwanted files. Items stored in Trash are taking up valuable disk space, so right-click it and choose Empty Trash Now to purge them from your Mac. Check the available disk space by clicking Go > Computer from the Finder menu bar, selecting the icon for your main hard disk and choosing File > Get Info (ç+I). Available space is listed in the status bar (you might need to choose Show Status Bar). If you don’t have at least 10GB free, it’s time to delete or archive your old files. Good places to look are your Movies, Downloads and Documents folders. DaisyDisk (£7.99, daisydiskapp.com) can help you find space-hogging files. Applications tend to take up a lot of space. You can drag apps you no longer use to the Trash or use an app like AppZapper ($12.95 – about £8, appzapper.com) to get rid of them. Creating a backup with Time Machine is a good idea before you start to trash files. Connect an unused or new external drive with sufficient space, and go to System Preferences > Time Machine to use it for backups. Backing up to a directly connected hard drive is faster than using a drive such as the Time Capsule, which backs up over Wi-Fi. If you do have a Time Capsule, it’s a good idea to connect to it using an Ethernet cable for the first backup. Even so, backing up several gigabytes of data will take an hour or two and will impact your Mac’s ability to perform other tasks. After the initial run, only incremental changes will need to be backed up, so it’s worth gritting your teeth and getting the first, full backup out the way. Then you can delete older, less critical files and folders, which should have the effect of making your Mac a little more sprightly.

Turn off features 
If you’ve freed up some hard drive space and are still experiencing slow performance, then it might be time to try disabling some features. To begin, go to System Preferences > Extensions > All and deselect any extensions you aren’t using. Open System Preferences > Energy Saver. On some older MacBooks, you may see a Better Battery Life and Higher Performance options. Choose the latter, then restart your Mac. This turns on the discrete graphics card, but it will drain the battery faster. A good trick for older Macs is to uninstall Flash. It’s a resource hog and drains your battery. Of course, you won’t be able to access Flash-based web content, but many sites have moved to a more modern HTM5 implementation now. You can find a Flash uninstaller at http://adobe. ly/1P9sdfw. In your web browser, remember to close down tabs and windows you no longer need as these are a drain on resources.

Quit some apps 
App Nap is a built-in feature that slows down apps that are obscured by other windows and not currently doing something. If an inactive app is using valuable memory, recent versions of OS X will compress the data it has in memory. That isn’t always possible, in which case the OS will write incompressible data to disk to free up space for another app. You can tell OS X the memory used by those apps can be used right away by other things by quitting them. If you find it hard to know which apps are open, in System Preferences > Dock make sure ‘Show indicators…’ is enabled. To prevent napping apps reappearing after a restart, go to  > Log Out… and deselect ‘Reopen windows when logging back in’. Turning off visual effects such as transparency, can deliver incremental but important performance gains. In System Preferences > Accessibility, turn on Reduce transparency. Even if text doesn’t seem blurry, go to System Preferences > General and toggle ‘Use LCD font smoothing’ to check its appearance before and after. MacBooks that start up slowly may not have been fully shut down the last time. This can happen if you closed the lid of your MacBook before the shutdown process finished, so don’t be too hasty when powering down for the day. After following these tips, you should find OS X runs much faster than before.

Fix any Mac or iOS problem in seconds

 Macs and iOS devices run smoothly and efficiently, but nothing lasts forever and over time you will run into problems. Bloated apps, upgrades that stretch your device’s hardware resources, and more demanding apps and games can all make your Mac struggle. Even though OS X and iOS are incredibly robust operating systems, you will eventually encounter a problem. In this feature, we’re going to look at common problems and how to fix them. In many cases, routine maintenance such as backing up and archiving old files and remembering to perform incremental updates to the operating system and apps makes a huge difference. Resource-hogging apps, stalled updates and backups that take days to complete are all easy-to-address issues which, once resolved, will improve your Mac. We’ve got a slew of tips on how to fix system performance, file management, and network niggles. Some issues will only have reared their head when you made the leap of faith from one version of OS X to the next - almost certainly from Mavericks to Yosemite. Jumping to the upcoming version of OS X, El Capitan, is bound to reveal additional gremlins. Issues with photos no longer being where you expect to find them, and other files seemingly going missing, are common annoyances. Many users have reported ongoing Wi-Fi and network problems in Yosemite, and iTunes 12 has also had some unwelcome surprises for unwary users. With Yosemite still exhibiting problems, and the beta version of El Capitan now available, this is a great time to learn about common Mac problems and prepare yourself for any trouble that might arise

Make iOS more like OS X

When it came to making an operating system for the iPhone and the iPad, Apple chose a different direction than it did for the Mac: a much simpler interface and a controlled environment. This control makes iOS a fast, safe and relatively trouble-free environment. The problem is that it comes at the expense of some powerful features. Unlike OS X, you have no direct access to files. Instead you have to access them from inside apps. The first thing you should do is get your files into Apple’s iCloud Drive system. Transferring files to iCloud Drive makes them accessible across all iCloud Driveenabled apps, including all of Apple’s iWork apps and Microsoft’s Office suite. In the upcoming iOS 9 you’ll be able to activate an iCloud Drive app by going to Settings > iCloud > iCloud Drive and switching on ’Show on Home Screen‘. This installs the iCloud Drive app on your iPhone or iPad’s Home screen, which is much more like using Finder in OS X. If this isn’t enough, then you should investigate remote access software, which enables you to view and control your Mac from an iPhone or iPad. Parallels Access (http://bit.ly/1INfAVU) is the best of the bunch, because it formats OS X and its apps to fit perfectly on the smaller iOS screen, and it has a great interface. It costs £13.99 per year. For a free solution, search for Google’s Chrome Remote Desktop in the App Store on your iOS device, and install Chrome and the corresponding extension